7th February Weekly Blog by Rachel

Illuminated Letters! In R.E we are learning about religious art. We had a look at the illuminated letters that the Monks would draw as the first letter on each page of the Bible. They would be very elaborate and would look stunning. The Monks spent hours drawing the illuminated letters but to make matters worse, they did it by candle light and had to write the Bible stories as well. It was done on vellum, which is a thin parchment that is made out of calf skin; also it was written in ink, which meant that they couldn’t go wrong because it wouldn’t rub off. Mrs Wood then set us the task of drawing our own illuminated letter out of watercolours! First we had to draw a border about ½cm wide. Then we had to choose letter and draw it. Some that the Monks drew were to do with nature, so we did too. The first thing we had to paint was the background, then the letter itself and then the rest of the detail. Then we drew and painted the border. Finally, titivating, we used gold and silver pens to jazz up our illuminated letters. After we’d finished, they looked amazing and we were proud of the finished look.